Butch Jones' impact? Check Antonio Brown

Daugherty: UC coach is poster-coach for sincere humility

Nov. 9, 2011

Paul Daugherty: I underestimated the guy. The coach with the 4-8 record and the high school slogans (Represent the C!) looked to be in over his head heading into this year. There was no questioning his drive and his Boy Next Door earnestness. In a profession not known for self-effacement, Butch Jones is the poster-coach for sincere humility. How that translated into success was open for discussion. / Enquirer file photo

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Antonio Brown was a race car without brakes or a steering wheel when Butch Jones recruited him. Now, he’s a young and improving second-year receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers. / AP file photo

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Butch Jones had a receiver at Central Michigan named Antonio Brown. Brown was one of those supremely talented players whose future was always a spin of the wheel. Maybe he’d make it, maybe he wouldn’t.

Raised in the difficult Liberty City section of Miami, Brown lived in an apartment building he shared with drug dealers and gang members. Gunshots kept him awake. Twice when he was 17, he walked past dead bodies on the way out the door.

Brown was a race car without brakes or a steering wheel. Now, he’s a young and improving second-year receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers. All he needed was someone to say a little prayer and show a little faith. That was Jones.

“He had nowhere to go,’’ the UC football coach recalls. “He got on a Greyhound bus in Miami and came to Mount Pleasant, Michigan’’ where Jones was the first-year head coach at Central Michigan University. Jones had recruited Brown when Jones was an assistant at West Virginia. Then he took the Central job. Antonio Brown was set adrift. He probably figured that’s just the way it would always be. No one else had taken much of an interest in him, either.

He was wrong.

“Antonio’s like a son to me,’’ Jones says.

Jones spent three years tough-loving Brown. After his freshman year – when he caught more than 100 passes and was the MAC Freshman of the year – Brown allowed his ego to get the best of him. He blew off offseason workouts. “He thought he was bigger than the team,’’ says Jones. “We suspended him for spring football.’’

Jones recalls thinking, “We’ve given him this chance. It’s up to him now. We took something away he needed in his life. It would either make him or break him.’’

I asked Jones what advice he had then, for his roulette-wheel wideout.

“Stay focused, stay grounded, work at being the best you can be. Never think you’re above anything, because it can be taken from you,’’ Jones says.

Brown came around. When Jones left CMU for Cincinnati, Brown opted for the NFL. The Steelers took him in the 6th round last year. He has 39 catches this year, and is seen as the replacement for Hines Ward.

We relay this story because it is essential Butch Jones.

Confession: I underestimated the guy. The coach with the 4-8 record and the high school slogans (Represent the C!) looked to be in over his head heading into this year. There was no questioning his drive and his Boy Next Door earnestness. In a profession not known for self-effacement, Butch Jones is the poster-coach for sincere humility. How that translated into success was open for discussion.

Not now, so much. The Bearcats have won six in a row and are essentially a win over West Virginia on Saturday from clinching their third BCS Bowl trip in four years. Proving that nice guys can succeed in a not-nice business, Jones lives the advice he gave Brown. How a football coach can get as far as he has without a travel bag for his ego is a mystery. “Success is a byproduct of a lot of people,’’ Jones says.

“The minute you think it’s about you, it can be taken from you.’’

Jones calls it The One-Second Rule. “It only takes a second to take down everything you’ve built,’’ he says. Given what’s happened at Penn State this week, Jones looks prophetic. “Never get ahead of yourself,’’ he says. “You have to prove yourself every day.’’

He washed dishes at a restaurant in the summer when he was 14. His father was the police chief of a small resort town in northern Michigan, so Butch never got in trouble. Butch still has the ID bracelet his dad wore, when the elder Jones was in the hospital. “That’s the last time we were together. I was holding his hand.’’ Butch keeps the bracelet in his Bible.

Butch rolls out the slogans and the goals and the exclamation points because he genuinely believes them. This year, his players do, too. Corny works when you feel like someone really cares about you.

“We invest in their lives. I want to share in their problems, I want our families to be their families.’’ Lots of coaches say this. How many have an Antonio Brown?

“I’m prouder of the steps he has taken to become a great person,’’ Jones says of Brown. “He’s the hardest-working receiver I’ve ever coached. I show our receivers video of him. I say, ‘This is a great example of a guy who made up his mind to make something of himself’.’’